Online ID Verification - A method to protect yourself from scammers

The internet use for the online marketplace or the eCommerce business is increasing with each passing day. The digital businesses operating in the digital environment are facing several challenges among which fraudulent transactions are major ones.

The fraudsters target online platforms to perform a variety of malevolent activities. They aim to access online user accounts and data. Through those, the financial, as well as customor information, is compromised that is further used for malicious and theft activities.

All enterprises and online merchants are adopting appropriate measures that could help them detect and prevent fraudulent activities. The online payment scams are increasing which includes a variety of high-scale financial frauds. These include money laundering, terrorist financing, and even the crypto exchanges and businesses are used to disguise the source of money.

The Process of ID verificationa and how it workds

These frauds include various stages that are complicated. The source, ownership, and identity are concealed in such a way that it gets complex for the system to identify the individuals. For this, merchants are now employing digital security measures that are linked to online identity verification.

The process of identity verification involves the verification of individuals through various methods. Digital identity verification can be done by identifying government-issued documents, biometrics, etc. It totally depends on the industrial niche.

For instance, the banking industry would require the Know Your Customer (KYC) verification of customers which requires documents. Similarly, the digital payment services providers can verify their customers through biometric identification based on facial recognition.

There are many types of online ID verification including facial verification, address validation, age verification, documentation authentication, 2-factor authentication, and consent verification.

Synthetic ID Theft

The lack of sufficient security measures in digital channels become the reason for synthetic identity theft. The fraudsters enter into the user accounts through credentials stuffing and other tricks and steal the information of users.

The identity theft information is then used to make fraudulent transactions over the network, impersonate people through phishing attacks, get illegal health benefits and certificates, get prizes, launder money, and many other criminal activities.

Chargeback frauds

A study shows that online retailers are expected to lose about 130 billion dollars in digital ‘Card Not Present’ fraud between the years 2018 and 2023. The fraudsters also claim chargebacks that have two major reasons. One is that the fraudsters make transactions from the card of the same legal entity and the real owner claim that it was not made by him.

Hence the transaction is done by some bad actor. The second is that the children use the credit card of their parents to buy goods online without the permission of their parents. The parents then claim chargeback over it.  

All this list of fraudulent activities can be mitigated by taking into consideration the appropriate actions and measures that could help reduce the risks of criminal activities. 

The online merchant which are selling online services to their customers which need to be secured. As per the page on PayPal, “all the businesses that used to collect the credit card information of their customer to process their online payments are strictly required to:

• Protect the information of a cardholder 
• Maintain a proper cyberattacks and vulnerability management program
• Implement strong customer authentication and control measures
• Build, maintain as well as take measures to secure the network in order to protect the card information
• Regular monitoring of transactions and risks assessment measures 
• Maintain the policy for information security 

These security measures could help online businesses reduce the risks of fraud and synthetic identity theft that could ultimately curb criminal activities. It is important to understand that online ID verification is the way forward for companies that want to secure their businesses efficiently. It not only helps them identify their clients but also adhere to the regulations of the financial regulatory authorities such as FATF, FinCEN, GDPR, etc.